Harper's BAZAAR Australia, June/July 2013.
Iggy Azalea, Rapper
Meet Mullumbimby-raised, US-based Iggy Azalea, Australia’s answer to the current fashion and pop culture obsession with female rappers — not that she’s been home in a while. After leaving Australia for Miami at 16, the now 22-year-old moved around the US, finally settling in Atlanta, fine-tuning her rap skills along the way and proving herself as a white Australian country girl who can kick it like Azealia Banks and Nicki Minaj. Last year she released an EP and a mixtape, was picked up by a major record label and a modelling agency and fronted a House of Holland Eyewear campaign; this month she’s performing at the Chime for Change concert in London, an initiative founded by Gucci and creatively directed by Beyoncé, no less. Her single Work is out now, and her debut album, The New Classic, is set to drop later this year.
Most-loved rappers: Tupac, Method Man, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes
Style icons: Grace Kelly, Gwen Stefani, Fran Fine from The Nanny
Leif Podhajsky Digital artist & creative director
Swirling clouds, mirrored pyramids, glittering rivers and psychedelic flowers … Podhajsky’s kaleidoscopic manipulations are all-consuming, mesmerising and in high demand, as this UK-based designer has brought back the cult of the album cover artist, after it was said to be lost forever to the digital revolution. Best known for his work with Tame Impala, his first client and the one that kicked off his career in cover art, Podhajsky has also worked with musicians such as Lykke Li, Foals, Grimes and Birds of Tokyo, to name a few. His coveted and often imitated style has him on the speed dial of some of the most influential record companies as well as in-the-know design lovers — he recently launched a collection of printed silk scarfs and his work hangs on the wall of the exclusive Soho House club’s Mayfair outpost. Podhajsky, who has a background in graphic design, explores themes of symmetry, geometric patterns and movement in nature — perhaps a reflection of his Byron Bay upbringing — and how these relate to music and its makers. The beauty of his work is that he blurs the lines between art and design, digital and analogue, screen and print, the future and the past.
Check out Leif’s blog, Melt (visualmelt.com), for mixtapes, art and digital inspiration.
Artist inspiration: Egon Schiele, Caspar David Friedrich and Hieronymus Bosch
Reading: Demian by Hermann Hesse; The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami; The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien; and National Geographic magazine
Listening to: Noctuary by The Holydrug Couple and World Music by Goat
Jess Scully, Curator/Festival Director
Self-styled “slashie” Jess Scully has her fingers in a lot of pies. She’s been the creative director of Qantas’s Spirit of Youth Awards, a magazine editor, freelance writer, policy advisor to the New South Wales minister for the arts and is currently the festival director of Vivid Ideas, as well as a TEDx curator.
Scully studied journalism and law with every intention of becoming a political journalist, but says it was her love of fashion and the arts that led her to where she is now. The bubbly and charismatic 32-year-old’s passion runs deep and she now works across all creative industries, tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and forming ideas
for the projects she curates, making her one of the most in-demand creatives in her field. “I love connecting people,” she says. “I’m not in film, architecture or design but I talk to a lot of amazing people in each of those industries, do the carryover and say, ‘Hey, architect A, what you do is awesome. Did you know that fashion designer B is doing this too?’ I guess it’s like being a pollinating bee.”
Vivid Ideas is on May 24–June 10.
Inspired by: TED.com. “I was lucky enough to attend TEDActive in Palm Springs this year. It was one of the most enlightening weeks of my life. I watch lots of TED videos, too. You can absorb a world-changing idea in 10 minutes.”
Listening to and watching: Radio National and ABC iview. “I’m a big fan of live radio and podcasts, and I also spend a crazy amount of time watching documentaries on ABC iview.”
New experience: Riding a bike. “Being a bike person changes everything. You ride though the city at a different pace, you run into people, you have conversations — it’s kind of amazing!”
Silvana Azzi Heras, Costume & title designer
Azzi Heras believes in fate, which figures: her career is apparently shaped by it. Catherine Martin, production designer and Baz Luhrmann’s partner, called Azzi Heras’s design lecturer during her final year of university and requested the best student produce some work for their production company, Bazmark Inq. “Lucky for me [the top student] was busy and I wasn’t,” Azzi Heras says with a smile. Fifteen years later, Azzi Heras is an essential cog in the Bazmark wheel, having worked on the company’s most prestigious projects, from Moulin Rouge! to the Chanel No. 5 short film starring Nicole Kidman, Puccini’s La Bohème on Broadway and, most recently, as assistant costume designer and title designer on The Great Gatsby. She tells of the months of research that went into Gatsby: “We had several costume workshops with the actors before we even started pre-production in Australia,” she says. “A lot of the time in NYC was spent rummaging through the laces and fabrics at Solstiss as well as working on men’s suits with Brooks Brothers, going through Tiffany & Co. archives and working with Prada, who designed Daisy’s party dress as well as 40 evening dresses.” It’s clear that she’s as mad about details as her bosses.
Most loved era: “The 1920s: the clothes, the hair, the makeup, the parties, the graphics, the cars … ”
Favourite film: A Single Man. “The simplicity and pace, the sets, the costumes … effortless and beautiful.”
Favourite scenes: “Mélanie Laurent putting up the neon letters outside the cinema in Inglourious Basterds — magical. And Kuntzel+Deygas’s idiosyncratic title sequence in Catch Me If You Can.”